Open Research Associate Positions at Bielefeld University / CITEC

he Semantic Computing Group [1] at the Excellence Center Cognitive Interaction Technology [2] (CITEC) at Bielefeld University [3] is seeking to fill two full-time positions as research fellow at level TV-L 13 (100%) of the German university payscale.

Currently, the group is working on argumentation technology. In particular, we are investigating how machines can be endowed with sufficient world knowledge so that they can understand argumentative structures expressed in natural language or generate coherent argumentative structures on their own, for instance in the context of transparent recommender systems based on interpretable machine learning. The group coordinates the priority program “RATIO: Robust Argumentation Machines” [4] that is currently funded by the German Science Foundation (SPP 1999).

In the context of the RATIO Program, the following two positions will be filled:

Position 1: suitable for a student looking to work towards a PhD or a postdoc. The candidate will work on developing information extraction algorithms that can extract information from biomedical publications in order to represent the content of articles in a structured fashion as a basis to synthesize arguments.

Position 2: is suitable for a postdoc or an advanced PhD student. The candidate will work on developing annotated datasets and shared tasks to support the benchmarking and evaluation of approaches developed in the context of the RATIO program. Beyond that, candidates are expected to pursue an own scientific agenda within the broader area of argumentation technologies focusing in particular on argumentation mining and/or synthesis.

Both positions require a Master degree or equivalent in computer science, computational linguistics or information science.

In addition, the following skills are expected:
– Practical experience with machine learning methods, especially supervised methods (deep learning, prob. graphical models, etc.), applied to information extraction problems
– strong programming skills (preferably Python or Java)
– strong analytical skills
– willingness to work in an interdisciplinary research environment
– strong communicative skills and willingness to work in a team

The following assets will be considered a plus:
– experience with argumentation technology
– experience with deep learning or probabilistic graphical models
– experience with information extraction from text, discourse analysis or semantic parsing
– demonstrable ability to perform research work (e.g., by a first scientific publication)
– knowledge of the German language

A doctoral degree is not required. We actively encourage and support working towards a doctoral degree as qualification goal.

The salary is based on Germany’s academic salary level TV-L 13 (100%). The entry level salary amounts to approx. 3.500 EUR per month (gross income) and may increase depending on experience and other factors such as marital or familial status.

The positions will be filled for three years.

Applications including a CV, university degree certificates and letter of motivation should be sent to per email until November 20th. Indicate in the application the position that is of interest.